Dissemination
by mayachain
Summary: Neville Longbottom, future Howarts students and questions.


**Dissemination**

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_What was it like_, the students will ask of him sometimes. _When you were a student, during the war, what was it like?_

Some will ask because he is young and approachable and they have no reference points of their own. Mostly, these are Muggle-born, and will be content to read Hermione's _Introduction To Recent History_ before coming back to him.

Some will ask loudly, brazenly, believing the tall tales their own parents told them and so sure of themselves... and so small, after just a few seconds, when most everyone's favourite Professor completely ignores them.

Some, however, will speak softly, half-scared of saying the wrong thing. _Were you afraid?_ And to those he will say, _I was afraid the whole time, we all were afraid the whole time, but it was that which saved us, our fear of what would happen if we didn't do anything._

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_Is it true that the House of Slytherin was bad?_ someone will say, whispers and rumours on their mind yet no clear grasp of what they are talking about.

_No,_ Neville will say. _I won't lie and pretend I didn't think some of them cowards, but before you grow up and have your parents tell you from when you were very young that once only this powerful wizard rises to former glory, everything will be al-right again... We didn't know the pressure their parents put on them, how very directly their families were threatened, much more so than our own families who fought against them, because they were doing it from the outside... We didn't know, and more than anything I wish that we'd had more time to think about this, back then._

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_Do you know a plant that might help against nightmares,_ a student will say, sometimes, and it will never be for themselves that they ask, but for an older brother, an uncle, a father, a Mum.

_Have you found a way to make them stop,_ the most foresighted ones will say, and he has prescribed a list during the last years, of things that will not work, things that should not be tried, anything that tempers with people's memories.

_Find something that makes them feel safe,_ he will say, _find out what it is, and have it near, a sound, a touch, a smell. Make sure they get enough sleep, regularly, make sure they sleep even if they are afraid. It only gets worse if you put it off, if you go for days without sleep._

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_Do you think my father has the right to be this scared? After all, he spent the whole war cooped up inside his house,_ a small and bitter boy once said, and Neville replied, _Did you ask why he never left the house, what happened to the people he loved, what he saw, what he heard._

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_Bind your magic together,_ he says to a couple when they come to see him at their daughter's urging, embarrassed and shy. He doesn't remember them from his school years, although they must have been there at the time, at the edges of everything that happened, four and five years younger than his own classmates and affected just like everyone. _Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, it works best when it's two wizards and / or witches from different Houses, it makes you stronger. Say it on evenings you suspect that something triggered a nightmare, say it during you wedding. Find a best friend if your spouse is from your own House, a cousin, a sibling. Alone, you are vulnerable to _Malignant Mærlings_ during the night – no, they really exist, my friend Luna showed them to me herself. Together, you are stronger; together, you can weave air-tight walls and they cannot get through._

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_Do _you_ have nightmares,_ a very young girl asks, and he looks into her eyes and says, _Only when I want them, only when I let them in because I want to learn something from them. My walls are pretty strong._

_But you don't have a wife, _some second-year says then, _no sister or brother, Professor. You must get dreams all the time?_

_Don't I?_ he says, and smiles, for a second looking every bit the hero the school-yard rumour says he is, mysterious, and they will wonder were he goes on his day off, where he sleeps when he is not at the school.

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End file.
